Developed by Smilegate and released in South Korea over two years ago, the wait for the Western adaptation was much longer than anticipated, until Amazon Game Studios was able to bring out a game its players fell in love with.
Lost Ark attracted over a million players at the same time during the days following its début, and its figures remain very respectable even now, exceeding 800,000 simultaneous sessions during prime time.
In fact, these high player numbers caused a lot of problems in the first few days. The servers were overloaded, overwhelmed by the huge number of people trying to play at the same time.
Following the New World fiasco and the many years we have spent waiting for a decent follow-up to World of Warcraft, Lost Ark has become one of the few candidates able to square up to the king of all MMORPGs.
Smilegate has achieved this through a very interesting combination of this genre's classic gameplay with more typical RPG features that focus on action, as seen in Diablo.
It has chosen its inspiration well and produced a very interesting combat system, in which exploration is left to one side, allowing us to focus on an incredible, highly addictive combat system.
We can choose between almost 20 different classes in one number, and this number will continue to grow over the coming months. Each of these offers a different approach to combat, from the classic healer to the role of assassin.
Not one single player hasn't found exactly what they were looking for, and very soon there will be new character categories that are even more diverse and specialised. One such character is an artist who promises to fill the battlefield with ink.
Although the wait since its release in Korea has been tough, it's now clear that it also had its benefits. As well as featuring content that comfortably exceeds one hundred hours and incentives to keep playing, expansions will soon also be available.
In fact, Lost Ark is expected to grow over the coming weeks thanks to a huge update which will include missions, events and a new boss who will rule over a previously unseen dungeon. And all within a few weeks of release.
It will even feature an event called Arkesia Grand Prix, which will include a special race mode that promises to be one of the most carefree available in a game that isn't aiming to attract only the most hardcore fans.
However, those looking for a more demanding experience will not be left wanting. As well as some dungeons that are very difficult to complete, a PvP mode will soon be activated in which we can fight to climb the ranks.
We could complain about the fact that it isn't available on consoles and it doesn't look like the developers have any intention to release it on PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo Switch in the future.
However, we should be grateful that the game is free to play on a PC and you don't need a particularly powerful computer to be able to enjoy it. It's the perfect opportunity to try it out and explore the huge world of Arkesia.
We haven't stopped playing Lost Ark since the moment it came out... Take the chance to try the MMO everyone's talking about.
